Posted on 05/20/2003 10:19:39 AM PDT by Sparta
Indonesia on Tuesday blamed separatists in Aceh for burning more than 100 school buildings in the province as it claimed minor victories in its latest bid to quell the 27-year-old rebellion by force.
Jakarta imposed martial law on the resource-rich province in the early hours of Monday after last-ditch talks aimed at saving a five-month-old ceasefire with the Free Aceh Movement (Gam) collapsed.
The Indonesian military, or TNI, claimed on Tuesday that it had killed five Gam members and captured seven more, despite what it described as efforts to "divert our attention" by Gam, which it accused of burning 120 schools in the last two days.
Gam said none of its members had been killed or captured and also denied burning down schools.
The first two days of Indonesia's biggest military operation since its 1975 invasion of East Timor have quickly moved into a daily pattern of claim and counter-claim.
Both sides are working hard to grab the moral high ground in a war in which analysts say both sides are deeply tainted by long histories of killings, kidnappings, and corruption.
But what has also emerged is the clear influence on both sides of the recent war in Iraq.
Indonesia, which opposed the Iraq war strenuously, has used it to justify its own actions against separatists by dubbing the march on Baghdad worse than anything Jakarta has planned against the rebels.
It has also adopted the public relations vernacular and tactics that war planners used in Iraq.
The military has "embedded" local journalists and claims Gam uses "human shields." What appear to be purely military operations are dubbed "integrated operations" to highlight yet to be seen humanitarian components. At a recent reception in Jakarta a government aide said he hoped the operation against Gam would amount to a "surgical strike."
Gam has learned its lessons as well. Opposition to the Iraq war in Indonesia - as it was all over the Muslim world - was driven by civilian casualties. So Abu Sofyan Daud, Gam's chief spokesman in Aceh, has spent the last two days accusing the military of killing civilians rather than rebels.
"Gam's real concern is with the civilians. We fight for them and they are on our side," he said Tuesday.
The borrowed PR tactics, though, may fail to recognise an important difference between the two wars, beyond their size. The conflict in Aceh is already 27 years old and is likely to be drawn-out rather than the lightning quick, media-friendly affair seen in Iraq.
"They (Indonesia) may be able to break the back of the Gam rebellion in a few months but I don't think they will ever be able to totally vanquish it," said Andrew Tan, an expert on south-east Asian conflicts at Singapore's Institute for Defence and Strategic Studies.
Don't want the wimmen get the book learnin' you know.
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